I was expecting £155 + VAT for the job but it was at this time, after all but two staff had gone home, that the subject of the "extra hours" work needed to be discussed.
"How much were you quoted??" said the foreman behind the desk.

"£155 + VAT" I replied

"For an S8??" he quickly responded...

"Yes. I was quoted £155 + VAT when I booked the appointment over the phone earlier in the week", said I, knowing that the person who had quoted me was Lisa Mackie, who was the only other employee in the building and was sat in the same office. She sheepishly did not look up from her computer screen.

The foreman muttered something about the S8 been more difficult to get to because "of the extra hardware" that needed to be moved out of the way. I did not have the knowledge to challenge him on that.

"And then there is the extra 5 hours that our technician has taken to drill and re-tap the sump holes".

Annoyingly I said that to spring such a thing on me at the 11th hour without consultation was a very poor practice (or words to that effect).
We finally agreed on me paying an extra 3 hours for the 5 hours of supplementary work, which at £75 per hour + VAT, brought the total bill to about £456.

That’s crazy! I know of at least 5 D2 S8s that have been serviced at Mackies (including mine at least 3 times) and the price has always been around the £155 + VAT. I do recall being asked once what I had been quoted and they expressed surprise (but honoured the quote), but my last service was still under £200 including VAT

My BS meter went off the scale when Dean mentioned they were drilling out broken bolts. WTF were they doing to break any of the sump bolts? I've seen under Dean's car and I call shenanigans. Was it trainee day with the impact wrench?

My BS meter went off the scale when Dean mentioned they were drilling out broken bolts. WTF were they doing to break any of the sump bolts? I've seen under Dean's car and I call shenanigans. Was it trainee day with the impact wrench?

Location: Inhabiting a house in a village, rural with lots of lovely roads

Posts: 1,934

I booked Mackies to service the Auto box on my D3 S8.
I left the car with them to collect the next day. When I collected it they said they'd been unable to remove the sump IIRC because they couldn't remove the exhaust down pipes due to corroded bolts.
It was all a bit vague and confusing to me.
They said that the boss had told them, in the event of being unable to remove the sump, to leave hot ATF circulating throughout the night to purge/clean the system. And that is what they did, apparently. I was also told that because of the volume of ATF consumed to do this, it cost a bomb, but that was something they'd swallow.

My car runs fine and the gear changes are sweet, but then they were before the service

I wasn't to happy with the entire experience and my next transmission service will be elsewhere.

I also had a bad experience with mackies, but it was around 2003-4, so probably doesn't count. There was nothing wrong with the gearbox in my Omega, but a couple of us from the owners forum went there and met up to have the gearbox filters and fluid changed.
They charged me for some 'magic potion' to be added, and this was never asked for nor authorised and in fact I only went there because they said they would use Texamatic 7045 rather than some universal stuff elsewhere then they probably changed the properties of this with some potion anyway because the shifts were perfect before and not so great afterwards.

It also weeped around the sump gasket afterwards and dripped about one drip a day, the only reason I can think is they didn't have a new one perhaps and reused the old gasket. There was an email chain at the time and I asked for a refund but they were not apologetic or helpful. If they just knocked off the price of the potion thatw ould have been a good gesture but they just said they add it to every gearbox and never had a problem.